Shake Down Dead by Diane Morlan

didn’t actually catch her doing
anything else like that. However, she was always asking questions
about people. I refused to gossip with her, even though I’m sure
others fell into her trap and told her whatever she wanted to know.
She did have a way of getting people to talk. It was one of the
things that made her a good social worker.”
    “Was she good at her job?” I hadn’t
even given that a thought.
    “She was surprisingly good with the
residents. I think after her father died she somehow related to
them. She said once that she understood how her clients felt when
people were cruel them. And she fought for them when
necessary.”
    “Why would she have to fight for them?”
I had no clue as to what a social worker did in the first
place.
    “The residents are in our program to
enable them to live their lives much like other citizens. They can
vote, buy alcohol and get a driver’s license when they are of age
and pass any tests required. They are quite independent. Several
have jobs in the community, the rest work at our workshop.
Sometimes people don’t understand that they are full members of our
society and are entitled to all the benefits as well as the
responsibilities.”
    “In what way?” I asked.
    “ I’ll give you an example.
Once they all went to the German Haus Restaurant for dinner and one
of the residents ordered wine. The waitress wasn’t going to give it
to her until she was told by Whitney that the resident was of legal
drinking age and had just as much right to a glass of wine as she
did.”
    “Any other examples?”
    “Things like that occur every day.
Whitney was always educating people that our residents need to be
treated just like anyone else. Most of the time people got the
message and behaved accordingly. Once in a while a person was just
too stuck in their ways to see our residents as anything more than
large infants or worse.”
    “What do you mean by worse?” Admitting
to myself that if I had ever bothered to think about
developmentally disabled people at all, it was usually in terms
like “retarded.” I, too, was guilty of seeing these people as less
than full-fledged citizens.
    “People often confuse mental
retardation with mental illness. They are usually ignorant of both
conditions. They are afraid the person will do something ‘crazy.’
Then they try to ban our residents from public places. A group of
parents even tried to keep them out of the public swimming pool
last summer. They were afraid their children would be molested.
It’s so absurd!”
    “And Whitney stood up for
them?”
    “Absolutely! She was first on the
agenda at the city council meeting. Threatened to sue the city if
they tried to keep her clients from their legal right to use city
facilities. There was a lot of good in Whitney that she could have
used in all areas of her life had she chosen to do so.”
    “She chose not to?” I asked.
    “She just couldn’t seem to get past the
death of her father and the loss of money and prestige in the
community. She was very angry with her father for leaving them in
such a mess. I think that the reason she fought so hard for her
clients is that she related to them. She often felt left out.
Although she couldn’t do much about her own situation, she could
help them. Unless, of course, she found a way to be rich and
powerful like her father had once been. Social work never made
anyone rich. It’s all so sad.”
    I thanked Bernie for sharing her
insight with me and told her I needed to get going. Sitting in my
car, waiting for it to warm up and melt the snow that had fallen on
the windshield, I thought about all Bernie had told me. Whitney’s
snooping stood out in my mind. If she had the nerve to snoop in
Sister Bernie’s files, she had the audacity to snoop anywhere. She
could draw people out. What information had she gotten and what had
she done with it? The word “blackmail” jumped into my head and
stayed there.

    16
    It had quit snowing by the time I